Bacula-users

Re: [Bacula-users] Deploying Bacula

2010-02-03 10:26:04
Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] Deploying Bacula
From: FredNF <fred AT nfrance DOT com>
To: bacula-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 16:23:46 +0100
Le Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:18:37 +0100,
Henrik Johansen <henrik AT myunix DOT dk> a écrit :

> The bulk of Bacula's DB operations are purely disk IOPS bound so I
> would argue that IOPS is way more important than RAM.
> 
> > With the others advices I had, I'm planning to have a dual Xeon
> > Nehalem, with 8 ou 12 GB of RAM, and four 300 GB SAS disks in RAID
> > 10. Not sure about the OS, I'm balancing between FreeBSD and Gentoo.
> >
> > But, if someone here have a similar setup, I'm ready to hear his
> > advices and tips about my configuration.
> 
> We are currently planning a large Bacula deployment (~1k machines) so
> I have been facing many of the same challenges.
> 
> Regardless of whatever database you choose you'll need enough disk
> IOPS to service the DB and I don't think that 4 x 300 GB SAS are
> sufficient.
> 
> A 4 disk RAID10 will give you the write IOPS equivalent to 2 disks
> and the DB is most likely going to do synchronous random writes which
> in turn is 100% disk IOPS bound.
> 
> Find the tech specs of the disks you are using - they should give you
> an indication of how many random write IOPS they can handle.

I will do some bonnie++ tests :)

> Additionally, you should align your FS to the same blocksize as your 
> database - 8K for postgresql if I remember correctly. It you are
> using a fixed blocksize FS where the blocksize is lower than the DB
> blocksize you could end up in a siutation where one DB operation is
> causing 2 or more disk IOPS.

Right, we never see the problem on this side. The filestem used for the
director can be:

        - if FreeBSD FFS or ZFS (ZFS is nice supported with FreeBSD 8)
        - if Gentoo or Linux Distro, ext4

In the same way, what FS do you, on the list, prefer for storage ? We
don't use tape, only disk storage. The first who talk of NTFS will need
to avoid my curses for generations.edk

> 
> We backup ~35TB each week in a 3 week rotation so we just have to
> scale out in order to meet our demands and we are planning to go
> multi-DIR, multi-SD with a couple of very hefty MySQL servers to
> service them.
> 
> Directors will run Linux and both our SD's and MySQL servers will run 
> Solaris.

So, you plan to have dedicated databases servers, having a lightweigh
director but huge database servers ?

And, if Solaris on the SD, you'll surely use ZFS ?
 
> The only place where we scale up instead of our are our SD's -
> currently our 3 SD nodes have access to 300+ disks and 2 dedicated 10
> Gbit fiber links.

Wow.. Tht's really impressive. I'd like to have enough money for
building such system. But, that's not and we'll use hand-made NAS with
poor inexpensive SATA disk ;)

> 
> > I'm freaking out about the configs files :) They'll be really huge I
> > think.
> 
> They don't have to - just split stuff into manageable pieces. We keep 
> one file per client which gets included into the bacula-dir
> configuration.

I was looking for includes. But, If I read well the documentation, I
can't specify a directory for includes. I need to give the full path
for each file ? Right ?

> 
> Use templating wherever you can.

The developers are working on an automatization of writing
configuration files just after a new install of a dedicated server :)

Regards,

Fred.

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